The Gem and Jewellery Export Promotion Council today urged leading diamond miners and other industry stakeholders to come together and carry out generic promotions of diamonds and jewellery so that the industry can grow in the face of increased competition from other lifestyle product categories.

Speaking at the inauguration of IIJS Signature, Rajiv Jain, Chairman said that the Indian trade had already forged an alliance for promotion of diamonds with another leading diamond mining company, and called upon DTC to consider forming a similar alliance. He was referring to the tie up between Rio Tinto Diamonds and Jaipur Jewellery Show to promote use of diamonds and coloured stones in jewellery that was announced at the recent JJS.

Addressing a press conference soon after, Jain said that GJEPC is already spending about Rs 100 crore on promotions across the world, and had now tied up with the Incredible India campaign launched by the Ministry of Tourism, Government of India. “Jewellery will now feature in each of the campaigns released by the ministry,” he added.

At the conference Sanjay Kothari, Vice Chairman, also reiterated that the Council was keen on launching united promotions of a generic nature in India and was talking to other stakeholders in the industry about this. “It may take some time for our vision of a united platform for joint promotions to take shape at a global level, but we are hopeful of doing something concrete in India this year itself,” he said.

One of the concrete proposals was to hold “about 10 B2C exhibitions in key cities”. These would be retailer-only shows, he added. Kothari also said that the GJEPC had decided to join hands with the Diamond Administration of China (DAC) to promote diamonds, and would be a part of the month-long Diamond Festival that the DAC was organizing in China later this year.

Responding to queries on this issue, Varda Shine said that though the DTC had stopped independent generic promotions after its share of the market fell below 50 per cent, it was willing to join hands if all the other mining companies agreed to forge a common platform. She also said that a lot of the current promotions undertaken by DTC, even if they were for a specific brand like Forevermark were indirectly also creating aspirational demand for diamonds in general.